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  Egyptair

  IATA/ICAO Code:

  MS/MSR

  Airline Type:

  Full Service Carrier

  Hub(s):

  Cairo International Airport

  Year Founded:

  1932

  Alliance:

  Star Alliance

  CEO:

  Captain Ahmed Adel

  Country:

  Egypt

Egyptair has 2x daily flights from Cairo to London Heathrow. The UK's busiest airport is EgyptAir's number-one European route by seats for sale this summer. If flights are considered instead, it is second only to Istanbul Airport, on the European aide of the Bosporus.

Heathrow's second flight of the day, which leaves Egypt in the late afternoon, is typically operated by narrowbodies. But this summer, it'll deploy 309-seat B787-9s briefly in July, August, and September, replacing 142-seat A320neos.

This upgauging contributes to Egyptair's Cairo-Heathrow summer capacity rising to 217,000 seats for sale, based on the latest OAG data. That's 3% more than in summer 2019 and the highest number since 2014.

What's happening?

While Egyptair's main Cairo-Heathrow service (MS777/MS778) remains intact, served 1x daily by the B777-300ER, its second daily offering (MS779/MS880) will see the B787-9 on 17 occasions this summer, replacing the A320neo.

OAG shows that the B787 will be used between July 22nd and 31st and from August 29th and September 29th. It'll then revert to the Airbus narrowbody, before the B737-800 takes over from the start of the Northern Hemisphere winter season on October 30th.

The summer schedule is as follows, with all times local:

• Cairo to Heathrow: MS777, 09:10-13:35, 1x daily, B777-300ER
• Cairo to Heathrow: MS779, 16:35-21:05 1x daily except Thursday (16:30-20:55 on Thursdays), currently A320neo, later B787-9 (see dates, above) and B737-800
• Heathrow to Cairo: MS778, 15:00-20:40
• Heathrow to Cairo: MS780, 22:10-03:50+1

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Mainly by narrowbodies

OAG shows that, in the past decade, 80% of MS779/MS778 flights were operated by narrowbodies. However, widebodies have played a role and at times were dominant.

In 2012, for example, the A330-300 operated 85% of services, but twin-aisles have increasingly given way to narrowbodies, with the right-sizing presuming helping with better yields, seat load factors (SLF), and overall flight performance.

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Egyptair's London passengers

In full-year 2019, Egyptair had 364,619 London seats for sale. Booking data suggests it carried approximately 308,000 passengers, for a 83% SLF. That would be 11 percentage points higher than its 2019 average seat factor, based on the carrier's annual report.

About six in every ten Heathrow passengers were point-to-point (P2P); they only traveled between Heathrow and Cairo. It's always good for a market to have a higher proportion of P2P traffic than transit as they're higher yielding and less expensive to carry. After all, transit passengers typically pay a lower total fare than P2P, despite flying farther. Higher P2P fares for non-stop service underpins hub economics.

Heathrow-Cairo-Khartoum #1

Booking data shows that around 31% of Egyptair's Heathrow passengers transited Cairo. Not surprisingly, Saudi Arabia was the leading country market, followed by wider Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq, Uganda, Eritrea, China, the UAE, and South Africa.

At airport level, Egyptair carried more passengers on Heathrow-Cairo-Khartoum than elsewhere else. It was followed by Heathrow to Jeddah, Medina, Luxor, Entebbe, Asmara, Sharm El Sheikh, Lagos, Hurghada, and Johannesburg.

Have you flown Egyptair? If so, where did you go, and what was your experience? Let us know in the comments.